What are you playing now: The New Thread

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

Off to the theatre.

When I get back I'll re-check all the votes for the character while I wait for the game to install

How can you justify this ?

[GhostofAnakin]

Decided to go back and kill Killavolt.  Yep, that was way too easy.  But that's what happens when the devs make a boss near impossible for the "recommended level" and thus you end up putting it off until you're well leveled up.

[Tale]

I beat Crying Suns. It was a lot of fun and I maybe played it on easy just to avoid the frustration FTL gave me. Nothing worse than constantly failing to see any progress whatsoever and not having any hints as to why without needing to read a guide. But it was too easy. I beat the whole game without dying at all. So maybe I'll go back and do some medium runs after they update it to let you replay old chapters.

I also played the latest Star Control: Origins DLC. Pretty decent, but I feel like the magical feeling I had when I first played the game has worn off.

[melkathi]

Things in Stygian are going well for the forum vote character Donald.

He is now Schizophrenic and has been cursed by <redacted> so that he cannot say <redacted>'s name. If he is forced to reveal the name, the curse will kill him. <redacted> says this is not a bad thing though, as having <redacted> as an ally can be beneficial under the circumstances we have found us in.

[GhostofAnakin]

The farther I get in Borderlands 3, the more it really does feel like there's so much less to do than I remember there being in Borderlands 2.  It literally feels like I'm basically just playing the main story constantly, unless I want to wander around to grind some XP.

[LadyCrimson]

23 minutes ago, GhostofAnakin said:

The farther I get in Borderlands 3, the more it really does feel like there's so much less to do than I remember there being in Borderlands 2.  It literally feels like I'm basically just playing the main story constantly, unless I want to wander around to grind some XP.

I got to lvl18/Athenas first trip (dunno if you go back again, I'd guess so based on the way the game is going). Best thing there is the

Spoiler

graveyard and farming that Chup. enemy

for loot and xp before moving on.
I think they basically failed at giving the player more of that illusion that the game is not super-linear. I mean  they were all linear, don't get me wrong, but something about 3 feels more small/encapsulated, and a lot of the areas/non-boss enemy fights feel more like mini-arenas then open/expansive or interesting design. Which is the impression I got from trailer gameplay but I was hoping I was wrong. Doesn't seem like it. I don't think traveling between planets does it any favors either. I would have preferred they focus on a single planet only. So BL4 could've been another planet, etc.

Edit: Found another couple legendaries, both things I won't use. Torque explosive weapons are very good now. Don't like most Maliwan (again, they made them lessser in BL2 as well). The radiation feels like Pestilent Defiler effect and works well, most of the time I don't' see a need for poison because of it.  Slag seems to be gone?

They made the hotfixes a hard/installed update yesterday and nerfed Killavolt some. I've been keeping my Slim unplugged from the 'net tho, until they stop updating it constantly. Can't stand constant changes.

Edited September 27, 2019 by LadyCrimson

[melkathi]

So mental conditions seem to have a few effects in Stygian.

Schizophrenia gives me a little bit of mental resistance but makes me more prone to catatonia (I guess there is a chance it triggers during combat and costs me action points, as I have seen lunatics randomly have conditions trigger at the start of a combat round).

It also though has affected the world - strange creatures only my character can see poking their heads out from corners, some npcs appear to have animal heads.

And during conversations, random dialogue options will get crossed out as I read through them, and be replaced with crazy rambling.

[Wormerine]

Wow, they didn't kid when they said that the final chapter of Celeste will be long and difficult. Seems like I am halfway there.
It is a bit too much for my taste. I do enjoy the technical side of the challenge, but it got to the point that on some screens I am not sure what I am supposed to do. Had to check walkthrough twice now. 

It is telling that I switch to Dark Souls 2 to relax when I can't handle Celeste anymore 

[Keyrock]

I'm going through Skellige in The Witcher 3, still in Act 1. It's probably my favorite area of the game, either that or Novigrad. I kind of wish more of the main plot took place in Skellige and less took place on Velen. Velen is just so soul-crushingly dreary (purposely so), Skellige is way more fun to adventure in. Anyway, I'm staying faithful to Yennefer (sorry Triss)... in the main game, anyway (I'm all about hooking up with Shani once I get to the Hearts of Stone expansion) and I'm going to try to get a free North, something I failed to do in my first playthrough. The way I figure there are only 2 paths to a free North... and really only 1, The first path is

 

Radovid lives and you help him out

However, that doesn't really lead to a free North, as far as I'm concerned, because

 

Radovid is a freakin' psychopath and he's just going to become an Emperor like Emhyr, except worse because, unlike Emhyr, Radovid is a complete lunatic.

So that only leaves one path, I think, which is

 

helping Dijkstra

I hate it because I'm pretty sure that means

 

I have to let Roche and Ves die, which sucks because I like Roche and Ves. Oh well, sacrifices.

I'm doing a spellcaster build with medium armor and as many sign intensity upgrades as I can get. I'm getting fairly close to maxing out Yrden. It's not quite the God Mode that was maxed out Quen in TW2, but maxed out Yrden is pretty crazy. The regular trap slows enemies to a crawl and constantly drains them, and the alt form is just a ridiculous turret that murders everything. It's especially great for bringing down harpies, sirens, and other flyers. It pretty much renders the crossbow obsolete (except for underwater stuff). I'm probably also going to max or nearly max Axii.

Edited September 28, 2019 by Keyrock

[Mamoulian War]

19 hours ago, melkathi said:

Things in Stygian are going well for the forum vote character Donald.

He is now Schizophrenic and has been cursed by <redacted> so that he cannot say <redacted>'s name. If he is forced to reveal the name, the curse will kill him. <redacted> says this is not a bad thing though, as having <redacted> as an ally can be beneficial under the circumstances we have found us in.

What character did you choose in the end?

[melkathi]

30 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

What character did you choose in the end?

Please refer to this post

[majestic]

21 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Wow, they didn't kid when they said that the final chapter of Celeste will be long and difficult. Seems like I am halfway there.
It is a bit too much for my taste. I do enjoy the technical side of the challenge, but it got to the point that on some screens I am not sure what I am supposed to do. Had to check walkthrough twice now. 

It is telling that I switch to Dark Souls 2 to relax when I can't handle Celeste anymore 

Wait until you see the B-side of Chapter 7.

Eh, and after that the REAL fun starts.

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Wait until you see the B-side of Chapter 7.

Eh, and after that the REAL fun starts.

Wait, there is B-side? I kinda asumed they chained them together this time around as I already reached one heart, and had to pass another heart barrier. 

EDIT. Oh you mean summit, B-side. I have done all of that. Some of the C-sides took persistance, though those were essencially one screen long. I am talking about Chapter 9, which they have just added. It trumps anything from the base game. 

Edited September 28, 2019 by Wormerine

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

Wait, there is B-side? I kinda asumed they chained them together this time around as I already reached one heart, and had to pass another heart barrier. 

EDIT. Oh you mean summit, B-side. I have done all of that. Some of the C-sides took persistance, though those were essencially one screen long. I am talking about Chapter 9, which they have just added. It trumps anything from the base game. 

Oy.

Wait, for real? They added something even worse? Wow. Le sigh.

[Wormerine]

Just now, majestic said:

Oy.

Wait, for real? They added something even worse? Wow. Le sigh.

Yup. 

[majestic]

I see myself playing some Celeste soon. I'm both excited and terrified at the prospect.

[GhostofAnakin]

On 9/27/2019 at 6:43 PM, LadyCrimson said:

I got to lvl18/Athenas first trip (dunno if you go back again, I'd guess so based on the way the game is going). Best thing there is the

  Hide contents

graveyard and farming that Chup. enemy

for loot and xp before moving on.
I think they basically failed at giving the player more of that illusion that the game is not super-linear. I mean  they were all linear, don't get me wrong, but something about 3 feels more small/encapsulated, and a lot of the areas/non-boss enemy fights feel more like mini-arenas then open/expansive or interesting design. Which is the impression I got from trailer gameplay but I was hoping I was wrong. Doesn't seem like it. I don't think traveling between planets does it any favors either. I would have preferred they focus on a single planet only. So BL4 could've been another planet, etc.

Edit: Found another couple legendaries, both things I won't use. Torque explosive weapons are very good now. Don't like most Maliwan (again, they made them lessser in BL2 as well). The radiation feels like Pestilent Defiler effect and works well, most of the time I don't' see a need for poison because of it.  Slag seems to be gone?

They made the hotfixes a hard/installed update yesterday and nerfed Killavolt some. I've been keeping my Slim unplugged from the 'net tho, until they stop updating it constantly. Can't stand constant changes.

I haven't bothered to farm anything because I can't seem to find a "boss" that drops loot that's worth my time farming it.

I'm just not liking the level design.  Like you mentioned, it feels more area-specific and less open world.  The actual open world seems just wandering around from "area to area" with nothing to do.  I also find the lack of sidequests harmful because I can't seem to level up fast enough to tackle the main story boss fights.  So my only alternative is just wandering around shooting random enemies to grind XP, but gets boring real quick.

They also have a weird boss leveling thing going on where the mission will be described as "Level X", but the boss at the end of the mission always seems to be X+4 or X+5 higher.  My current mission, I thought I was sufficiently overpowered as I was Level 32 and the mission said it was for Level 29.  But then when I get to the boss, the boss is Level 33 and I can't beat it.  And I'm kind of stuck because there are no sidequests for me to do in the meantime to help level up more.

I don't know.  The more I play, the more I think it's a step down from what they achieved with BL2.

[Hawke64]

ReCore.
I've reached the Eden Tower and the difficulty has just spiked for both combat and platforming. I suppose, it is the last area and it is supposed to be challenging, but the rest of the game was much easier (and, occasionally, boring).
The story is surprisingly tragic (for seemingly lighthearted action-adventure) so far.

Edit. Completed the base game. Started the optional part, not sure, if I should finish it.

Edited September 29, 2019 by Hawke64

[melkathi]

First impressions of Stygian:

The good:

- The Writing - the characters you encounter are interesting. The story is properly lovecraftian. The dialogues are good and the crazy is crazy (and sometimes funny).

- The Aesthetics -  the art style works for the game. Yes, you aren't going to get nightmares from seeing a mi-go in this game. But it all works and it does get across disturbing when it needs to.

- Sanity - Sanity is something you cling to, but it also is the mana pool for your spellcasters, which results in an interesting balance between getting things done and trying to be sane to enjoy the results.

 

The not so good:

- Combat - combat can be too punishing. Which would be OK if it always were the result of your mistakes. But the flee mechanic doesn't work in the way it seems to have been envisioned: hold out long enough and make your escape. Then there is the issue that it can be very hard to click on a tile if a corpse is laying there; often you'll end up looting instead of moving and wasting precious action points.

- companions can't use their skills to help you out. Need to pick a lock? You subterfuge companion won't do it for you.

 

The bad:

-The Save System - the game creates autosaves for everything, but does not let you delete them. Even if you track down the folder on your HD and manually delete them, the game will still list them. Enter a store -> autosave -> leave store - > autosave -> forgot something and re-enter -> autosave

 

The worse:

-The Save System - if you create a new character it deletes the saves of your old character.

 

 

I am liking it, but I hope they overwork that mess of a savegame system.

Edited September 29, 2019 by melkathi

[LittleArmadillo0]

Went back to playing Enderal: Forgotten Stories. I am enjoying it far more than my first time around. Some things are still confusing me like the level up system but I think I'll get the hang of it.

[LadyCrimson]

@ GhostofAnakin - 

From what I've read, the "good loot" drops mainly from using Mayhem modes after beating the story (you have to get to Sanctuary in TVHM to activate Mayhem modes). Otherwise while there are enemies that drop decent stuff, it's still very random/fairly rare, so it's not like you'll see more than a handful or two of Legendaries in the first Normal playthru, probably.

Bosses are definitely scripted to always be higher level than you, but maybe there is a max cap to it - it's just that under normal play you'll never reach it, like you've discovered. I haven't had any issues with it yet (I did avoid that Killa guy because of all the stories). In Normal, melee with 120% melee bonus weapon is so strong now that half the time I just run up and whack things to death, with occasional wild bouts of jump-running in circles, even bosses - since my main issue is the horrible aiming drift with controller. Also, like all the other BL's, there's always some trick or spot to find that at least makes a fight easier.

Killing random trash mobs definitely nets you low xp.

The way loot boxes and enemies respawn now is weird too, it's all timered, even if you only fast travel to ship and back ammo and cheap lootboxes mostly respawn each time (but red chests do not respawn for a long time no matter how many times you quit/reload, no clue what the timer length is - tested in the first Promethus area that has a red chest with some bandits). Edit: some enemies will not quickly respawn if you  only FT back and forth but do respawn on every quit/reload

Edited September 29, 2019 by LadyCrimson

[GhostofAnakin]

I was able to beat that boss I was stuck on.  I only leveled up one more level, but I was able to upgrade my mech tank ability to have a faster cooldown so I could use it more often during the fight, then randomly ran around using weapons with elemental damage to drop its health continuously (if slowly) while the mech cooled down.

I got nothing of note for beating it, though.  No legendary weapon, not even a purple.  That's the kind of boss fight where the Devs should have rewarded you with something really cool.  Instead, I basically just got rewarded some cash because the stuff that dropped was only good for selling at a vending machine.

[Malcador]

EU4 campaign with Russia off to a good start, have Poland as an ally and have erased Tver, Kazan and almost all of Novgorod.  Just need to suck up to Sweden and maybe go beat up Georgia next.

[Keyrock]

You know, for as much as I like The Witcher 3, and I do, the movement in the game can be infuriatingly inconsistent. Most of the time, if I'm jogging forward and I stop pressing up on my left stick Geralt takes 2 more steps forward and stops, which is fine, I don't expect him to completely stop instantly like he's a character in a NES 2D platformer. Once in a while, however, I'll be jogging forward and I'll stop pressing up, which is interpreted by the game as take 8 more steps forward. Then there is the fun times of trying to get on a boat from the dock. Most of the time it works as expected, you just walk off the dock right onto the boat. Once in a while, though, I can't just walk onto the boat because apparently Geralt can't lift his foot higher than 4 inches off the ground. This forces me to attempt to jump onto the boat, which, naturally, results in me diving over the boat and into the water. My favorite one, though, is when you make a small jump over some obstacle and upon landing Geralt decides the thing to do is to immediately go into a roll, despite the fact that I'm not pressing any controls. This is especially fun when you're up on a platform somewhere high enough that falling=death. I'm assuming that Geralt is still recovering from his rolling addiction in TW2 and sometimes he falls off the wagon.

Edited September 30, 2019 by Keyrock

[LadyCrimson]

BL3 - I hate the (sorta) platform jumping moments. Such never bothered me in old stuff like Tombraider but modern day 3D games sometimes gives me vertigo/falling panic. In real life I refuse to even get on ladders and while I can stand on a cliff edge w/no problem, I can't look DOWN without feeling a little oogy. Not sure why some games it won't bother me at all but some games it does - maybe 1st person vs. 3rd person - but anyway BL3 is one that does. Bah.